I started writing my first book when I was still at school. It wasn't historical fiction, it was high fantasy, and it was the first of ten books, under the collective title The Watcher's Heir . I knew from the word go that it was going to have this number of books, although I didn't really work out exactly what would happen in each one. Twenty-five years on and the books are still not finished, although I now only have a couple more to go! Every Christmas I settle down and manage to write a chapter or two more, and every New Year it is my resolution to finish them. I suspect this will go on for a few years more. In the passage of time since then, I've written more than a dozen books. I can't quite pinpoint what it is which keeps obstructing the conclusion of these books. It could be that I am not the same person I was 25 years ago (who is?!), and so the voice which began the books is almost unrecognisable. It could be that I have now passed the age almost all of my ...
For NaNoWriMo last year, I wrote a book called The Stonemason's Crown . This was in part inspired by a discovery I made whilst poring over a map. It was not an old map, but a map of old things using LiDAR technology. For Christmas, my sister got me a copy of that map, printed on metal and zoomed in on the very spot where my story was set. Maps give an amazing insight. Not only do they point out landmarks which are sometimes long gone and forgotten, they also show how people reacted with - and believed in - the world where they lived. Where would our imaginations be without etched sea serpents, or "Here Be Dragons" on the edges of these documents? Time was I would only read books which had a map in them. I've got a little bit more accepting now, but I still get a real buzz as a reader to find a beautiful map tucked into the opening pages of a book. My dad loves maps. Consequently, I have always found them fascinating. He has quite a collection, some which are hundreds...